Monday, March 26, 2007

Consumer goes digital

Last week I was privileged to spend a whole day with one of the most clued-up consumer researchers in Finland, Minna Autio. We discussed with a Finnish magazine publisher about young consumers, digital trends and technologizing youth in general. When talking about youth as consumers (of media) Minna brough up interesting issues such as the relevance of speed, cross media attitude, brands and new type of visual "language" of media. According to TNS Gallup / Atlas, Finns spent seven hours per day with media (2006). According to the survey tv takes 43% out of that seven hours, radio 32%, internet 10% and newspapers/magazines the rest.

I would like to question the results as today people are multitaskers. Many youngster watch tv at the same time they surf the Internet or play web games on their laptops. Also I would quess music phones (where you can download songs) and iPods/MP3 players have already gobbled up part of radio's share. I am sure the results would be different if the survey would be addressed to e.g. 15- 25 year olds. The media scene is way more interactive, spontaneous or reactive than before.

Related to digitalizing youth, did you know that Microsoft has hired Gaming Specialists to highlight the insights of gamers and gaming? There is one specialist in every Nordic country. In Finland Mr. Jarno Kallunki is the fortuitous one. I met him this morning at the tv channel MTV3's Morning Show. I am sure he will be an excellent "role model" for kids and a great link between a multinational cooperation and the gaming scene. But the big challenge is to find ways to communicate the big picture of digital gaming/consumerism to the general audience. Gaming is nothing but violence and waste of time for many. Jarno will be working as a specialist for 6 months (5 months remaining). Let's see how he (or Microsoft) is able to turn upside down the public image of gaming ;)

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